The Supreme Court punched a hole in Trump's tariff strategy Friday.

The White House responded in 48 hours with a new 15% global rate.

That's not policy. That's a tantrum with statutory authority.

Here's what you're walking into this week:

Translation: This is not a week for heroes. Or large unhedged positions. Or assuming the AI bull case survives contact with reality.

VIX won't sleep below 15. Credit spreads are historically tight with stress building at the CCC margin. The crowd on Polymarket is coin-flipping direction on both the S&P open and NVDA.

That's not confidence. That's a waiting room with expensive chairs.

The week rewards patience and scenario prep. It punishes front-running.

The Supreme Court killed the legal scaffolding for Trump's tariffs. 6-3. Clean ruling.

The White House responded within 24 hours. New 10% global tariff. Then 15% by Saturday.

Think about that. One business day from legal defeat to full re-escalation.

Effective Tuesday, Feb 24: 15% on everything coming through the port. Every importer. Every SKU. The effective U.S. tariff rate is marching from ~3% pre-2025 toward 8% or higher. Multinationals are scrambling. Domestic-facing materials and industrials are watching the rotation of money come their way.

Translation: Policy uncertainty isn't a tail risk anymore. It's the base case.

Tuesday night, 9:00 PM ET. Trump delivers the State of the Union. Markets aren't watching for applause lines. They're watching for three things:

Then Wednesday, NVDA reports. That's 72 hours of SOTU, Consumer Confidence data, and the most important earnings print in the AI trade.

Most full months don't carry this much risk. This week does it in three nights.

Eleven Fed speakers across the week. Waller goes on Monday. Goolsbee, Bostic, and Cook on Tuesday. Barkin Wednesday. The market is pricing zero near-term cuts. Any hawkish deviation, even a subtle one, means a 5–10 basis-point yield spike and USD strength that pressure growth equities.

Watch whether they're coordinating a "wait and watch" posture. Or starting to push back on tariff-driven inflation. That distinction matters.

Friday: Core PPI, expected +0.2% MoM. Arrives last. Has the most potential to ruin the week's narrative. PPI feeds directly into PCE. PCE is the Fed's inflation gauge. A hot print after a week of tariff re-escalation and Middle East oil risk forces a full recalibration of expectations for the March and May cuts.

The week's sequencing: Fed sets tone. SOTU delivers policy signal. NVDA is the binary fulcrum. PPI Friday is the verdict.

No single print this cycle carries more macro weight. That's not hyperbole.

Analysts are projecting 71% year-over-year EPS growth. Revenue near $65.9 billion. Options are pricing an 8–10% move in either direction.

That options structure is not noise. It means the crowd is demanding a premium to hold NVDA through the print. That's genuine binary uncertainty.

Here's the question that actually matters: Does guidance on data center demand and hyperscaler capex validate the AI growth narrative? Or does it signal deceleration?

Because if the guide disappoints even ambiguously, it doesn't stay contained to one stock.

Sound familiar? This is how 2026 has worked. One guide. The entire complex moves.

Same night: Salesforce, Snowflake, and The Trade Desk report. Simultaneous stress-test of the AI software and enterprise cloud spend thesis.

If NVDA delivers but CRM or SNOW guides cautiously, that divergence matters. It signals that the AI hardware wave hasn't yet translated into software monetization. Watch for it.

Tuesday pre-market Home Depot: Real-time referendum on consumer health under elevated mortgage rates. Same-store sales and renovation commentary are the tells. Softness amplifies the recession-whisper narrative.

Wednesday pre-market Lowe's: Heavier pro-builder exposure than HD. If HD and LOW diverge, that's a consumer-versus-contractor split within the category.

Thursday after close, Dell and Zscaler: Dell is relevant for its GPU server business. AI deployment tailwinds should show up there. Zscaler extends the enterprise security and cloud infrastructure story.

The Supreme Court created a legal speed bump. The administration used Section 122 and Section 301 authority to drive it through.

The 15% global rate, if unremedied, does three things:

The trade restrictions are not going away. The legal vehicle just changed.

The AI trade dominated 2025. It's in a reset phase now.

Mega-cap tech is broadly negative YTD. Are investors asking the uncomfortable question: Does hyperscaler capex actually convert to revenue?

Deloitte's semiconductor outlook puts it starkly. Generative AI chips may approach $500 billion in annual revenue in 2026. But they represent less than 0.2% of total unit volume. Hyper-concentrated. High-stakes. Simultaneously generating unprecedented revenue growth and creating systemic supply chain fragility.

NVDA's Wednesday report is the AI trade's quarterly report card. Anything short of beat-plus-raise extends the rotation from tech into energy, materials, and staples.

Brent crude hit six-month highs last week. Markets are pricing in a risk premium tied to U.S. military action against Iran.

The Strait of Hormuz handles approximately 20% of the global oil supply. 20 million barrels per day.

Trump's 10–15-day ultimatum was issued around February 20. The deadline lands inside this trading week. Iran has conducted live-fire exercises in the Strait. Joint naval drills with Russia are planned.

Tortoise Capital has stated directly that a prolonged Strait disruption would send oil above $100/bbl.

Combined with the new tariff regime, that's a genuine stagflationary input-cost shock. The Fed has no clean answer for that.

Polymarket entering the week: 54% probability of a down open Monday for the S&P 500. NVDA directional market sits 55% for Up. Both readings are near-coin-flip.

Translation: The crowd is not making directional bets. They're waiting for catalysts.

VIX context: Earlier in February, the VIX surged nearly 10% in a single week, pushing above 21. Analysts are calling 2026 a high-floor volatility regime. VIX rarely sustains below 15. Frequently spikes toward 30.

The options market pricing an 8–10% NVDA move is consistent with that regime. It's not speculative hedging. It's pricing the health of the entire AI capex cycle.

Credit: High-yield bond spreads averaging approximately 300 basis points YTD. Historically tight well below the 5-, 10-, 20-, and 25-year medians of 350, 393, 448, and 454 bps, respectively. But CCC-rated bonds are underperforming. Lower-quality names are showing stress at the margin even while headline spreads look fine.

If macro risk amplifies this week, CCC spreads widen faster than BB spreads. That quality bifurcation often precedes broader market anxiety. Watch it.

A soft guide cascades through the entire semiconductor and AI software complex. SNPS, SNOW, and CRM accelerate their YTD underperformance. Forward Nasdaq earnings get repriced. Given the 8–10% options-implied move, a 5–7% NVDA after-hours drop adds 0.5–1.5% of index pressure the next morning.

Core PPI materially above +0.2% MoM, arriving after a full week of tariff re-escalation and NVDA headlines, immediately invalidates any earlier Fed dovish framing. Markets reprice toward a delayed or suspended cut cycle. Yields jump. The dollar strengthens. Tech, REITs, utilities, and small caps face synchronized pressure.

Confirmed U.S. strike or partial Strait of Hormuz closure. Oil spikes toward or above $100/bbl. Energy stocks benefit. Airlines, chemicals, and transportation logistics face immediate pressure. Combined with tariff-driven inflation, it's a stagflationary setup the Fed cannot defend against.

Expected 84–85. A substantial miss lands on the same day as the Case-Shiller Home Price data, ahead of the SOTU. It validates recession concerns building in soft-data surveys. Arriving before NVDA on Wednesday, it sets a negative tone heading into the week's binary fulcrum.

Highest event density of any group this week. NVDA is the headline, but memory supply stress is an emerging structural problem.

Deloitte forecasts 50% price spikes in memory components by mid-2026 as AI chip demand crowds out automotive and consumer end markets. If NVDA's guide signals packaging or memory supply chain constraints, it creates a paradox: negative for AI-adjacent names, bullish for pure-play DRAM and NAND producers.

Most geopolitically exposed group this week. The dual tailwinds of the Iran oil risk premium and rotation out of tech have produced outperformance in early 2026.

Treat the Iran clock as a binary event with significant unwind risk on de-escalation. This is a headline-driven trade with sharp reversal potential.

HD and LOW results will either validate consumer spending resilience or confirm creeping deterioration. Housing affordability remains strained under elevated mortgage rates. Any miss from either becomes a consumer health data point with cross-sector implications.

CRM, WDAY, and SNOW need to demonstrate that AI is translating into realized enterprise spend, not just infrastructure capex. Any guidance language about elongated sales cycles or customer budget scrutiny signals that enterprise monetization of AI is slower than the bull case assumes.

High yield spreads at historically tight levels have provided no buffer or early warning for prior equity stress events in 2026. If tariff costs, PPI, and NVDA begin registering in CCC-rated spreads specifically, that quality bifurcation is a leading indicator of broader credit repricing, particularly for leveraged companies with significant import exposure or floating-rate debt.

This is not a normal earnings week. It's a convergence of trade policy re-architecture, a geopolitical countdown clock, the AI trade's most important quarterly report, and a Fed communications campaign unfolding against an inflation backdrop that the tariff regime is actively making harder to read.

Three rules:

The setup does not favor complacency in either direction. It rewards patience, scenario preparation, and the discipline to let catalysts reveal direction rather than front-running them.

Enjoy that volatility.